In GRRM’s latest TWoW spoiler chapter “Mercy”, Arya is continuing her apprenticeship with the Faceless Men by learning the mummer’s art with Izembaro and the company of The Gate. The play currently in production is “The Bloody Hand” by Phario Forel and as the chapter unfolds we learn it is to be performed in honor of an envoy from the Seven Kingdoms. Mercy is playing the role of a girl who is raped and murdered by the dwarf, a not-so-subtle caricature of Tyrion Lannister, whom we believe to be inspired by the whore Shae.

Our first hint that the characters in the play correspond to people in Westeros comes when we learn “The Bloody Hand offered two kings, the fat one and the boy. Izembaro would play the fat one. It was not a large part, but he had a fine speech as he lay dying, and a splendid fight with a demonic boar before that.” No doubt as the author intended, we immediately think of King Robert. The Queen, played by Lady Stork, wears a cloth of gold gown and imbibes in a glass of wine before each performance. Undoubtedly this is Cersei. The boar itself and the Stranger, the personification of Death in the Westerosi religion, are each given distinct parts. But it is the character played by the dwarf Bobono, referred to as “the Imp” by Mercy, who appears to be not only the central character but also the most significant correlate to Westerosi current events. The dwarf’s entrance is followed by these words:

“The seven-faced god has cheated me… My noble sire he made of purest gold, and gold he made my siblings, boy and girl. But I am formed of darker stuff, of bones and blood and clay…”

If a dwarf in the midst of a story about Robert Baratheon and a boar wasn’t clue enough, this seems like proof positive that Bobono’s character is Tyrion Lannister. Shortly after we get Mercy’s line “I’ll come back after the Imp’s done raping me.”

The meaning of Mercy’s “tonight I’ll be raped and murdered” is becoming clear. It’s perhaps understandable that many at first believe this young girl to be Sansa. Besides Sansa’s well known connection with Tyrion Lannister, her familiarity as a character and the delicious notion of Arya performing as her own sister, we have the fact that Mercy’s character is described as an innocent young maiden (“Please, m’lord, I am still a maiden”) But given the very first information we have about the character is “…tonight I’ll be raped and murdered” it seems clear that we should look elsewhere to identify Mercy’s character, as Sansa was neither raped nor murdered.

By examining the events that led to this play appearing at this time in Braavos we can gain a great deal of insight on the identity of this young maiden. The death of Robert Baratheon is clearly referenced, but we find several subtle references to events following the death of the boy king in Westeros, notably the trial of Tyrion Lannister and his subsequent murder of his father and Shae.

During Tyrion’s trial, we get this testimony from Shae:

“…He used me every way there was, and… he used to make me tell him how big he was. My giant, I had to call him, my giant of Lannister.” […] The sudden gale of mirth made the rafters ring and shook the Iron Throne. “It’s true,” Shae protested. “My giant of Lannister.” The laughter swelled twice as loud.

It’s easy to believe this detail becoming a part of the chain of chinese whispers that led to “The Bloody Hand” being written in Braavos when we return to this detail from the play:

Bobono’s cock was indeed flopping out. It was made to flop out, for the rape. What a hideous thing, Mercy thought as she knelt before the dwarf to fix him. The cock was a foot long and as thick as her arm, big enough to be seen from the highest balcony.

And further testimony from Shae:

I wasn’t only Lady Sansa’s maid. I was his whore, all the time he was here in King’s Landing. On the morning of the wedding, he dragged me down where they keep the dragon skulls and fucked me there with the monsters all around. And when I cried, he said I ought to be more grateful […] “I never meant to be a whore, m’lords. I was to be married. A squire, he was, and a good brave boy, gentle born. But the Imp saw me at the Green Fork and put the boy I meant to marry in the front rank of the van, and after he was killed he sent his wildlings to bring me to his tent. Shagga, the big one, and Timett with the burned eye. He said if I didn’t pleasure him, he’d give me to them, so I did. Then he brought me to the city, so I’d be close when he wanted me. He made me do such shameful things…”

Not only do we find the language here that echoes Mercy’s line “Please, m’lord, I am still a maiden” and a clear insinuation that Tyrion raped Shae on more than one occasion, but we also see Shae protesting her former innocence (maidenhood) while reminding the court that she was Lady Sansa’s maid.

One more line of dialogue from the play that seems to clearly place its origins at the trial is:

“As I cannot be the hero, let me be the monster, and lesson them in fear in place of love”

Compare with Tyrion’s outburst at his trial:

“You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is.”

While Tyrion is referred to (even by himself) as a monster repeatedly, this is the most public such reference and it comes at the event where we find the origins of the main action of the play, the rape and murder of the maiden played by Mercy in the second act.

As for the rape and murder themselves, we must take a look at the events surrounding the discovery of Shae’s body in Lord Tywin’s bed. First in a clever nod from the author to the chinese whispers that lead to a story like this getting around, we have

The hall was full of fools speaking in whispers […] Guards and servants alike shrank back before her, mouths flapping.

Then Cersei’s discovery of the body:

She strode to the bed, flung aside the heap of bloody coverlets, and there she was, naked, cold, and pink… save for her face, which had turned as black as Joff’s had at his wedding feast. A chain of linked golden hands was half-buried in the flesh of her throat, twisted so tight that it had broken the skin.

Probably not a leap to imagine that those golden hands embedded in the broken skin are bit bloody (thus the bloody coverlets.) Not to mention that Tyrion, the former Hand of the King, has the figurative blood of both Shae and his father on his hands. Nor can it be a leap to imagine that her naked state might lead some witnesses to assume she had been raped, especially since she had insinuated at the trial that Tyrion had done exactly that on more than one occasion.

Cersei commands the Kettleblacks to remove the girl and adds-  “No one is ever to know that she was here.” However, we know that the Kettleblacks work for Littlefinger and we have no reason to trust in the discretion of the other guards and servants who had already borne witness to the corpse.

So here we are with a young woman closely associated with Tyrion Lannister, who has protested her own innocence in a public forum,  whose naked and strangled body is discovered moments after Tyrion is known to have murdered his own father. Shae ticks all of the boxes of Mercy’s character in a way Sansa does not. For this reason we conclude that Mercy’s maiden is indeed Shae.

As discussed in Radio Westeros Episode 01: Arya — A Gift of Mercy

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co-written with yolkboy

Copyright Radio Westeros 2014